Encyclopedia of the Mind

Article excerpt

This two-volume reference set exploring the human mind gets high marks for credibility and comprehensiveness. Editor Harold Pashler is a well-regarded psychologist who has gathered an impressive list of contributors providing "brief but authoritative entries covering all major disciplines concerned with the study of the mind" (xxix). The intended audience is college and university students studying cognitive science and related fields. For this reason, it fills a gap in the existing literature for this subject area. The volumes are of most use to students with a working knowledge of science.

The entries are appropriate in length and depth for reference books. The editor has presented 293 individual topics related to the human mind. Examples of topics covered are Apraxia, Cognitive Dissonance, Desirable Difficulties Perspective on Learning, Gesture and Language Processing, Placebo Effect, Development of Spatial Cognition, and Visual Imagery The explanations are broken down into common approaches to the subject area: computational, cultural, evolutionary, philosophical perspectives, practical applications, and psychological research. …